Gripe: Stupid work ethic.. coworkers coming in sick.

There's a stomach flu going around the office this week, don't know who got it first. I've heard that it's one of those where you don't know whether to sit on the crapper or puke into it. Very nasty stuff. The symptoms only last a couple days, tho, I think. At least 4 people were affected by it in my department of ~15.

But the reason why we're getting sick is because people don't stay home when they have an illness. I know that most diseases are most contagious before you show symptoms, but still, stay away from me if you're sick! If one of the sickos visits my desk today, I'm tempted to ask them to leave, cuz I don't want to puke this weekend. It sounds mean to ask them to leave but they shouldn't be at work in the first place. Go the fuck home.

It's totally inconsiderate to come into work when you're ill. Most employers I've worked for have actually had "stay at home if you're sick so the rest of us don't catch it" policies, even if they were informal and not really enforceable.

I'd go to your supervisor/manager/boss person and tell them that you're going home because everyone around you is sick and you don't want to take a chance on getting sick. They'll either let you go home or tell everyone else to leave.

I have to agree with you wholeheartedly. I will never understand why people refuse to stay home when they feel like crap. Seriously, they're probably less productive when they're at work and sick, then when they stay home for a day or two.

And then they come to work anyway and all they can talk about is how sick they are and how they feel like such crap and wishing they'd stayed home. Gee, perhaps you might've done yourself a world of good if you'd just done what you were wishing you'd done, don't 'cha think? I wonder if they come in for the sympathy (if they even get any)? That, or either they're feeling guilty about calling in sick before when they weren't really sick and are now trying to make up for it.

What really gets me is that most of my dept is salaried and flexible on the sick days anyway, so they have little reason to come in. It's a freaking IT dept, too, so if we're slow getting stuff out the door, nobody notices.

If you come in when you're sick, and you're not doing critical work that costs lives or more than your yearly salary, you're not a hero, you're a dumbass.

It's probably an ingrained result of our earlier McJobs where the management assumed if you called off you were a worthless slacker. Also, when it's February, you are afraid to take sick days too liberally as who knows how sick you (or possibly your kids if you have them) would be later in the year.

Let's say you get 5 sick days a year. If you're off with some bug early in the year, you don't have any time to take off if you get sick later in the year, so you go into work and spread your pox with your fellow employees. It's a terrible system.

In my company in England, you get as much time off sick as you need, provided that if it's more than a couple of days you get a doctor's note. Easy. I guess I take about 5 days a year with cold/flu-type things, and every so often when one of my extreme sports gods claims a bone, I'll get another week off. It's seriously not a big deal over here, but I'd hate to be working in the US where they assume you're not going to be sick more than 'x' days a year. You never know what's around the corner.

My wife gets 20 sick days as an allowance every year. If she takes more than a handful, it is a bad year. But there are others in her small company who treat the sick days like extra vacation days; and that is what steers management types everywhere to think that staff abuse the privelege big time.

I don't know how many sick days I get; I don't care. If I am sick, I stay home although in this place, that just means I work there instead of here. Some incentive, uh. But here, some co-workers' kids will get sick, they dont, but they will still infect the entire office. Robitussin for all.

I totaly agree with the "stay at home if you're sick" policy. We've got a NASTY flu going around our office too and I'm pretty sure I'm starting to show symptoms, DAMMIT!

I was feeling ok yesterday until people were sniffling and groaning all around my desk..i'm just thinking "Oh god please leave my area, leave!!!" Maybe it's psychological...but that's another reason people who are sick should stay home...so the rest of us don't THINK we're getting sick

We get our sick time and vacation time lumped together. That's real disincentive for taking sick time. Still, companies should have a policy against coming in sick and send those who do home. It's a terrible thing for efficiency.

At least where I work they have a policy of if you come in and then leave you don't have a sick day marked. It's not great in that you could possibly spread your sickness, but at least they want you to go home and not get penalized for a sick day since they saw you sick.

Originally posted by 68K:In my company in England, you get as much time off sick as you need, provided that if it's more than a couple of days you get a doctor's note. Easy. I guess I take about 5 days a year with cold/flu-type things, and every so often when one of my extreme sports gods claims a bone, I'll get another week off. It's seriously not a big deal over here, but I'd hate to be working in the US where they assume you're not going to be sick more than 'x' days a year. You never know what's around the corner.

Every company I've worked at in the US has had the same system. Really, I can't imagine working at a company that has a sick day allowance, as I think it's a horrible idea for the reasons that 68K mentioned.

We don't have an allowance, we take sick days when they're needed, and as long as we don't abuse the system, no questions are asked.

Originally posted by Arleban:It's probably an ingrained result of our earlier McJobs where the management assumed if you called off you were a worthless slacker. Also, when it's February, you are afraid to take sick days too liberally as who knows how sick you (or possibly your kids if you have them) would be later in the year.

++fuckity++

My old call center job had the worst sick policies known to man. First, they combined your sick time & vacation time into a single PTO pool, so if you called in sick, you lose a vacation day. Second, they did not make the distinction between "excused" or "unexcused" absences - they considered all sick days to be "unexcused" even with a doctor's note, so if you called in, you got written up no matter what. They can and did fire people for calling in sick, even when they had a doctor's note every time.

So yeah, when I worked that job, I came to work when I was sick. I made a point of hacking and sneezing on the bosses when this happened. There was one occasion when a coworker came to work with meningitis, and had to be taken to the hospital.

I'd rather have everyone around me sick than for them to be stupid. I find throwing something glass as soon as you walk to your cubicle is a good idea. No one will bother you, but you have to vary the days otherwise people will think this is to ward off evil spirits or desk foxes with their magic pots...eeeeeevil foxes..

Salaried employees at my work are allowed up to five days of sick leave per illness with no set limit for the year. Hourly employees have a set pool of sick time.

While I agree people shouldn't go to work while sick, many use up their sick leave because of sick kids and lack of day care. Also, many here (including management) still equate face time with diligence and a good work ethic. It's all about quantity, not quality in their eyes. Never mind 10 hours of a sick person's time are probably nowhere near 8 hours of a well person's time, it's the 10 hours that look "impressive" during review time.

At my previous "Dilbert World" job (before the sick days and vacation were pooled) you had to fight just to go to the doctor and if you called in sick you were punished for it (with more work and all the crap work for weeks). People came in sick all the time, barely got anything done and we barely allowed to take time to go to the doctor.

i.e. I was having some severe pain in my back, I had to beg to be allowed time off to go get it checked and when I returned to work that day I was expected to stay late, twice as much then when I was out for the appt.

The company I work for doesnt have a set amount of sick days. If youre sick, you dont come in.

I work in a small room with 6 other guys, almost all of whom have kids in grade school. So I dont get all the disease germs that are going around, I just get the strong ones that have managed to survive jumping multiple people. Cold season sucks.

And on the other hand there are people like myself. I'm a contractor, thus any vacation or sick days are completely unpaid. I have a kid and a mortgage to support, so I come in unless I've got a fever or can't keep food in (at one end or another).

I'm sorry I make you sick, but when it's a choice between coming to work and feeling miserable, or staying home feeling miserable and not getting paid. Well, the wallet wins out.

It's a union thing. If your comaony uses union labor, then the negotiate the number of sick days allowed to help prevent "sick outs". Also, as a union employee, it's much harder to get fired, so once you're getting paid no matter what, the urge to call in sick a lot can be quite compelling. With a set # of days, it provides the company a way to get rid of the employee without breaking thier union contract.

So yes, it's a crappy system, but blame greedy and self centered employees and union members, not the companies implimenting them.

I have to agree with you, but unfortunately I had to come in, even as I feel the first signs of a cold coming on. Why? Because a subordinate didn't listen to me or her other boss when we told her to go home at the end of last week and again on Monday. So she muddled through to get work done which is commendable.

Course she still feels like crap and called in this morning. I was about to call in, but checked my messages beforehand. Since there's one function where she and I are the only ones who can do it, I had to come in.

I'm feeling better, but it's probably best I get out of dodge and get healthy.

Heh, I had that nasty stuff a few weeks ago. First, my son got it on my days off. Not fun, trying to console a 22 month old who has no idea what's going on, just that every so often he's hurting and has nasty stuff coming out of his mouth. Oh, and he's really hungry.

So, I got puked on more than once comforting him. Then, I got it.

Kind of interesting, in a detached sort of way, trying to decide whether to stick your head or your ass in the toilet. Glad I didn't get too confused and stick the wrong end in.

As for work....well, I took a couple days off, to get over the sprints to the pot. At work, I just let everyone know at the start of the shift what I had, and told them I'd be in the stockroom most of the night. Just asked that if anyone needed to talk to me, they used the phone. Of course, my boss had to speak to me face to face, so the dumbass got it just before his vacation...

Originally posted by Arleban:It's probably an ingrained result of our earlier McJobs where the management assumed if you called off you were a worthless slacker. Also, when it's February, you are afraid to take sick days too liberally as who knows how sick you (or possibly your kids if you have them) would be later in the year.

++fuckity++

My old call center job had the worst sick policies known to man. First, they combined your sick time & vacation time into a single PTO pool, so if you called in sick, you lose a vacation day. Second, they did not make the distinction between "excused" or "unexcused" absences - they considered all sick days to be "unexcused" even with a doctor's note, so if you called in, you got written up no matter what. They can and did fire people for calling in sick, even when they had a doctor's note every time.

So yeah, when I worked that job, I came to work when I was sick. I made a point of hacking and sneezing on the bosses when this happened. There was one occasion when a coworker came to work with meningitis, and had to be taken to the hospital.

That how my last job was in Texas. Call Center deal, same thing. Everything in one PTO pool.

Threads like these really make me appreciate being in the Caost Guard. All the stations I've been at you can usually call in sick 1 day. If you are still bad then you have to go to the clinic and they'll send you home for a few days.

Originally posted by 68K:And that's why the 'sick day allowance scheme' is bullshit.

Let's say you get 5 sick days a year. If you're off with some bug early in the year, you don't have any time to take off if you get sick later in the year, so you go into work and spread your pox with your fellow employees. It's a terrible system.

In my company in England, you get as much time off sick as you need, provided that if it's more than a couple of days you get a doctor's note. Easy. I guess I take about 5 days a year with cold/flu-type things, and every so often when one of my extreme sports gods claims a bone, I'll get another week off. It's seriously not a big deal over here, but I'd hate to be working in the US where they assume you're not going to be sick more than 'x' days a year. You never know what's around the corner.

I get 3 weeks of vacation per year plus 4 days sick leave per year with my job. However, it all counts as 'personal leave' hours on my time card so it doesn't matter if I take 3 weeks for chemo treatments or what.

In addition, once I use them, the more I work, the faster they build. That 3 weeks and 4 days is just the max I can accrue before needing to use some so it will accrue again. In reality I don't get a set number of vacation hours, I get a minimum with incentive to work more to earn more.

My former company abolished sick days, at least for the salaried employees of Northern VA offices (call centers might have been different). Before that, you had like 14 sick days a year, some rediculously high amount, but that led to people taking it as "extra vacation," then determining who was really sick or just hung over, and so on. Finally, they said, "You're all grownups. If you are sick, call in sick. If you call in sick a lot, and your manager becomes tired of it, he/she can demand doctor's notes, but otherwise it's up to the managers." Sick day use was cut in half by the following year.

My current work gives me 5 sick days a "year" (your year from when you were hired, not a calendar year), but they have a sliding "work from home" policy that remians unwritten, and no one has abused it so far. Since we're such a small office, one sick person can pretty much spread it to everyone rather quickly, so "feeling bad, working from home" is not considered a bad thing.

"You're all grownups. If you are sick, call in sick. If you call in sick a lot, and your manager becomes tired of it, he/she can demand doctor's notes, but otherwise it's up to the managers." Sick day use was cut in half by the following year.

That's what it's like where I work. It's all salaried professionals and sick leave is unlimited. I believe the average number of sick days taken is 3/yr. I think things get slightly more complicated if you need to take off more than a week due to illness, but it's really a very sane policy.

Originally posted by Erorus:There's a stomach flu going around the office this week, don't know who got it first. I've heard that it's one of those where you don't know whether to sit on the crapper or puke into it. Very nasty stuff. The symptoms only last a couple days, tho, I think. At least 4 people were affected by it in my department of ~15.

If it's really a stomach flu, your coworkers have food poisoning, which means that they were either eating the same food, or they are degenerates who don't wash their hands or eating utensils

when I was young, I never wanted to go to school, so would constantly say I felt sick. my mom would take my temperature, and unless it was 100 or more, sent me to school. she would say 'if you don't feel well at school, call me and you can come home'

after a while, I just started to tough it out, and now that I'm in college, unless I've got broken bones or like the flu, I'll go to class. shit, once I went to class with the flu. during the winter. oh yeah, that was a fun shuffle to class.

So, I figure once I get a job, I'll continue on with the 'unless I'm really, really, really sick, I'm going to work' thing. I mean, I might need those sick days for important things, like getting hammered for a friend's birthday and not having to go to work the next day.

I usually come in sick. Why? Because I don't care about my coworkers. Why? Because at my job:If I call in sick, they say "Okay, feel better". But I only get 3 sick days a year. One of our performance review metrics is attendence, so if I miss a day because I'm sick, I fuck up my review (HOW THE FUCK IS IT MY FAULT?). If I go over 3 days (very rarely, but sometimes it's sinus infection/flu year), then I have to start burning Personal Days, Floating Holidays, and Vacation time. Those days, however, aren't counted against my attendance, but fuck if I want to use vacation time to feel like shit.

So, I show up to fucking work. If you want me to stay home, don't penalize me for doing so. I hope every one of you cocksuckers gets sick from me, my sick days are for "great days to be outside". HA!